Fabulous Purple Finches

One of the Purple Finches that arrived in my yard recently

Most winters, I spend hours peering at the birds at my feeders, in futile hopes of spotting a Purple Finch amid the throngs of House Finches. The two species look fairly similar, but while I have House Finches all year, the Purple Finches only come to my area in the wintertime. I suppose most people wouldn’t care which is which, or which one happened to show up from year to year. But I’m not quite like most people—I’m a birder.

Birding at the C & O Canal this summer

For me the thrill of seeing a new species for the year, for the season, or even the first time in my life can last for days. I use eBird to track the number of different species I see each year, as well as my lifelong sightings.

The reason I longed for a Purple Finch in my yard is their infrequent visits to my area. They’re not rare overall, but they don’t make it to the DC area every year, to say nothing of my own neighborhood & yard. I have house finches in my yard all year, including numerous youngsters begging food from their parents in the late summer. Purple Finches, however, spend the warmer months much farther north—in Canada and northeastern U.S. They only venture as far south as DC in the wintertime, if at all.

A White-throated Sparrow from last winter

Other birds also come to my area only in the winter, like Dark-eyed Juncos and White-throated Sparrows. But while these birds are regular and reliable winter residents, the Purple Finches don’t always show up here. Their winter movements depend in large part on the size of the cone crop in their Canadian breeding grounds. How good a year conifers like pines, firs, and spruces had affects the amount of food available if the birds stayed north for the winter. In poor years for conifer seeds, we mid-Atlantic birders have a much better chance of seeing uncommon winter visitors like the Purple Finch and Pine Siskin. Ornithologist Ron Pittaway makes an annual winter finch forecast to help birders know whether they can expect movements of these longed for species. The summer of 2018 was a poor cone crop, according to Pittaway’s report, and indeed Purple Finches have been seen all over the midAtlantic region, including my yard. For once, examining every finch at my feeders paid off!

The Purple Finches were pretty hungry when they arrived.

In fact, the Purple Finches arrived in my yard even before I saw many of my winter regulars like White-throated Sparrows and Dark-eyed Juncos. The first thing I noticed about them was the bright white line over the females’ eyes, called a supercilium. Females are brown and streaky, much like the female House Finch. Males of both species are washed with pinkish-purple. They also have a more intense supercilium as well as a darker stripe down the sides of their chin (called a malar stripe). On the Purple Finch, these stripes are pink, while the House Finch's marks are brown. I had to double-check in both Peterson and Sibley field guides to make sure, but yes indeed, I finally had my Purple Finch! The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Project Feederwatch has a very helpful description of Purple Finch and House Finch field marks as well.

Female House Finch on the left, female Purple finch on the right.

That was my 137th bird species for this year-- tantalizingly close to my goal of 150! Will more uncommon birds visit my yard this winter? I sure hope so. Have you seen any interesting birds this fall? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Winter Flowers

Well, it's been a while since my last post. For those of you who've been wondering, I'm ok, just busy. I'm still in grad school and also got a part-time job this spring. The spring semester just finished, though, so I have a bit of free time at last. Woo-hoo!

As I've mentioned in past entries, this winter was significantly milder than usual. But still, come January and February I was aching for bright flowers. Brookside Gardens to the rescue! The Winter Garden at Brookside Gardens is an outdoor bed that holds lots of super-early blooming flowers. This year apparently things bloomed a couple weeks earlier than usual, but I wasn't complaining!

Japanese flowering apricot (January 14)

Hellebore (January 14)

Witch Hazel (February 10)

Pussywillow!! (February 10)

Winter Aconite (February 10)

Admittedly, few of these early bloomers are native to our area, but sometimes any flower will do!

Today's site: Brookside Gardens, Wheaton MD.

Frozen Motion

The week before Christmas we went to Cape Elizabeth, Maine, to visit some of my family. One morning, my dad and husband and I took a cold windy stroll at Crescent Beach State Park.

Peaceful to look at, but boy was it chilly!

I'm fascinated with the ways sand and wind and water interact. Check out these fractal-like ebb patterns I found in a patch of black sand.

I'm not sure what the black sediment is, but it makes a pretty pattern!

I also found windblown sand ridges further down the beach. Years ago I took a winter walk on a beach during a snow storm that frosted every tiny ridge. We had no snow on this hike but shadows made a fine contrast instead.

Ripples in the sand look like frozen motion to me.

It was fiercely windy. Sometimes fine sand whisked past in ghostly swirls.

A haunted beach??

In addition to dislodging the sand, the wind also whipped up some vicious waves. Mist sprayed high in the air each time the waves crashed over some rocks just offshore.

Brr.

At one point we wussed out a bit, and walked inland part of the way back to escape the wind.  Near the start of the inland trail we found these fluffy seedheads glowing in the sun.

The wind was much reduced here. Whew!

Eventually we returned to the beach and headed back toward our car.  The wind was still gusting but at least it was at our backs. Out on the waves a couple lobsterboats rode by, seemingly oblivious to the biting wind.

Kudos to the stalwart lobstermen.

To finish off, we decided to thaw out at a nearby coffee shop, The Local Buzz. They serve locally baked pastries, coffee, café-style food and even beer and wine. We curled up in cozy armchairs to enjoy scrumptions pastries and decadent mochas. Yum! I highly recommend this cafe if you’re ever in the area.

Today's location:

Crescent Beach State Park, Cape Elizabeth, ME.

Frost Whispering

It’s been an unusually mild fall and early winter so far. We had half an inch of snow a couple days before Halloween—very early for our area—but other than that the weather’s been quite warm. We’ve had some daytime temperatures as high as the 50s and 60s (Fahrenheit) even into December, and only in the last few weeks have we regularly had nights cold enough for frost.

About two weeks ago, though, a particularly heavy frost inspired me to try some winter photography both in my back yard and at Meadowside.

Due to the crazy weather, I still had dill in the garden. The volunteer seedlings that sprouted in late summer were still thriving despite the early snow and occasional hard frosts.  Now the feathery fronds were all sugared with frost and surprisingly ethereal.

Dill in December?!

I harvested some dill just a few days later; it wasn't frost-burnt at all.

Of course I had to scrape the ice off my windshield before I could hit the road. I grumbled at even this short delay, worried the frost might melt before I could get to the park.

I had to rummage through the garden shed before I found my ice scraper, more delay!

But when I reached Meadowside everything was still rimed with ice. Frost lay in a glittering cover across the grass, and crunched under my boots.

Part of the path around Meadowside's pond.

There was even a patchy skin of ice on the pond. I’m told by my family in Maine that their favorite skating pond hadn’t even had this much ice yet—their weather has been oddly mild so far too.

Not exactly skating ice.

A little clump of reeds in the middle of the water was positively furry with ice crystals.

 

I love the two different forms of crystal here: flat plates vs sharp spikes.

This shot makes me think of a monstrous spider crawling across the pond.

Here the whippy loops of the reeds seem almost frantic to get out of the pond.

A short hour after I arrived, the sun had cleared the treetops and sunshine began to creep across the grassy areas.  I crouched down to try to capture light shining through the frost.

Sparkly.

As I snapped shot after shot, I started to notice a quiet crackling just at the edge of my hearing. It was a little bit like distant static, or like somebody gently crumpling a piece of plastic wrap.  I couldn’t trace the sound to any specific location, it was just whispering all around me. Then I realized perhaps I was hearing the frost start to melt, as the tiny ice crystals cracked and even detached from leaves and twigs. Wow!

The sunlight starts to hit the frosty field.

After an early-morning ice storm you can sometimes hear the ice quietly shifting and resettling on everything around you. This was like that but on a much, much smaller scale. It was totally unexpected, and if there had been anybody else at the pond I might have missed it. For that matter, if I hadn’t been holding still for so long, I might even have drowned it out with my own breathing or my own footsteps. I’ve never heard frost whisper before; I didn’t know it was even possible. It was a brief and solitary experience, but it was still the best part of my day.

This entry's locations:

• Meadowside Nature Center, Rockville, MD.
• My yard, Montgomery County, MD.